Posted on 08/12/2012 10:42:36 PM PDT by Praxeologue
Anybody who believes Paul Ryan wants the government out of healthcare is falling for a typical Paul Ryan scam. He slices, he dices, he throws up some smoke and then he brings out the mirrors---and then he brings in the government.
Ryan's plan calls for keeping medicare intact for anyone who is 55 or older, then he gets slippery with his plan. For Americans currently under 55, his plan will give them a health insurance voucher as high as $8,000 per year. Government will get to decide what insurance companies are eligible to accept the vouchers. Ryan says all the major health insurers will be approved and accept the vouchers. Guess what that means? Edge to the major insurers.
Ryan says his plan will eliminate the Independent Payment Advisory Board,aka the Death Panels, a panel of 15 experts nominated by the president to recommend policies to cut Medicare costs, which is part of Obama's Affordable Care Act. But it is just slick packaging by Ryan to claim that his program does not include a death panel. With the government approving what insurance companies are approved to accept vouchers, the government will also by necessity have to approve the minimum services and types of services the insurances companies will have to cover. In other words, Ryan's plan takes the death panel into a deeper and darker backroom. I suspect it would eventually drive out of the healthcare business all insurers that are not part of the voucher accepting crowd--just like Obamacare will do
Indeed, the Ryan plan has a lot of other bells and whistles that Obamacare has. It requires insurance companies to insure people who have pre-existing conditions (which means someone, somehow, will be paying for these added costs heaped on the insurance companies for this) Ryan's plan also has adjustments on the size of the voucher based on wealth an income. It's socialist through and through.
It's not a surprise that ABC says:
Underneath the rhetoric, however, Ryan's plan to reform Medicare -- a central part of his 2012 proposal -- bears some glaring similarities to President Obama's health care plan.
Like his Price Stability bill, Ryan flashes and dances about getting the government burden off peoples backs, but when the smoke clears, Ryan is one big government dude.
Real healthcare reform would get government out of the sector, not set up some kind of voucher system that keeps government in the middle of healthcare for the benefit of the crony healthcare industry. The Ryan plan sets up such power centers that the evil will seek to take advantage of. It would result in higher costs, poorer quality treatment and less innovation.
Ryan is a real bad operator because his slick moves will make many think he is attempting to shrink big government. He isn't. He just has a shinier suit with a slicker spiel.
The same with the imperative to end government schooling as currently constituted.
Once he’s elected you keep their feet to the fire. Right now you simply defeat Obama.
The only option to the Romney-Ryan team is the Obama-Biden team.
I did not know he changed his plan. It was originally palatable and reasonable. First step in fixing this crap is to get insurance companies out of Medicare and Medicaid. In fact, we should get them out of collusion. Insurance companies are driving up healthcare costs while health care providers squeak by. They explain it all as “risk”, but we know it is more Ponzi scheming at work. Using the healthy, young producers to carry the burden of everyone else. The entire insurance industry needs fired, from health care to auto.
We cannot afford either current Medicare or ObamaCare. Whatever you say we have, we cannot afford it. Here is the preamble to Levin's article of yesterday, cited above:
It is simply a fact that the United States government is now on track for an unprecedented fiscal disaster — with debt quickly surpassing the size of our GDP and reaching twice that size in the coming decades, crushing any chance for robust growth. It is also a fact that the rising cost of Medicare is at the very heart of that disaster. The program has been growing far faster than the rest of the federal budget for decades, and the trend is only set to accelerate.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare spending as a share of the economy is five times what it was in 1970, while all other federal spending combined (excluding interest) is 1.1 times what it was. By 2035, CBO expects Medicare costs to be nearly twice what they are today as a share of the economy, while all other federal spending combined will actually decline somewhat as a share of the economy. The debt problem is a Medicare problem. There is no way to avert fiscal disaster without significantly reining in the growth of that program. Even President Obama has acknowledged that no other solution, and certainly not his symbolic class-warfare tax proposals, could be sufficient, saying last July that “if you look at the numbers, then Medicare in particular will run out of money and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up.”
And yet, even though he acknowledges this fact, the president has chosen to do nothing, and indeed to stand firmly in the way of doing anything meaningful to solve the problem. Obamacare’s Medicare cuts and its board of price controllers aren’t a solution — the CBO debt and Medicare growth numbers cited above already include them, and the agency (along with Medicare’s actuary, who works for the president) has said they are very unlikely to work. What is needed is a structural reform of the program, to enable it to deliver coverage to seniors far more efficiently by driving more efficient delivery of care. But seniors who are now in the program don’t want to hear that it’s going bankrupt, and don’t want to think about changes to it, so the politics of Medicare argue strongly against any kind of solution. The president and his party have chosen to make the most of that political reality, quietly raiding Medicare to fund Obamacare but otherwise leaving the program to its sorry fate. They have denied the need for reform. It would take real political courage to do otherwise.
Also how much can this cost be offset by those who are healthy enough that the insurance companies makes a profit by not having to spend out even equal to what was paid in?
There does, indeed, come a point when we have to decide what will happen to those among us that are either born sick or become uninsurable?
I would hope that a baseline would be assumed.
None of what anyone in DC proposes is about HEALTHCARE it is always about INSURANCE. You want to make insurance more affordable??? It is easy. Three things will change the cost of health care (and hence insurance)-—1) allow people tp buy a plan that fits their wants and needs; 2) allow people to buy insurance across state lines ; 3) do serious reform in the area of litigation (i.e. medical malpractise attorneys fees and awards). 1 and 2 already exist in the auto insurance and life insurance fields. The third is needed in general
Medicare is mandatory at age 65 so your example has already been covered
Medicare as it is currently structured underpays docs and hospitals and other health care providers. One finds scammers trying to get extra money from the government by milking the system with unnecessary and fraudulent billings. This can be minimized if A0 the government paid in a timely fashion (6 months down the line doesn’t cut it) and B0 paid a reasonable rate to providers (one of the reasons docs won’t see medicare patients is because they can’t AFFORD to.)
The response to this is not particularly complicated....but does require some math....
In 2011 we financed 1.3 trillion of federal spending. The balance, 2.3 trillion was derived from tax revenue. The 1.3 is 36% of total spending of 3.6 trillion in 2011. Basically about 41000/sec. Average federal tax receipt per PERSON in US is 4600/yr!!!!
Borrowing money ...as a Federal priority....rather than creating a business and community environment where income for Americans is high enough to justify these levels of expenditures, is what happens when the Treasury Dept has become the Washington branch office of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan
The response to this is not particularly complicated....but does require some math....
In 2011 we financed 1.3 trillion of federal spending. The balance, 2.3 trillion was derived from tax revenue. The 1.3 is 36% of total spending of 3.6 trillion in 2011. Basically about 41000/sec. Average federal tax receipt per PERSON in US is 4600/yr!!!!
Borrowing money ...as a Federal priority....rather than creating a business and community environment where income for Americans is high enough to justify these levels of expenditures, is what happens when the Treasury Dept has become the Washington branch office of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan
“that we are impatient for a return to conservative government. We’ve waited decades for even a hint. It will take at least that before we can reach anything that we can call “conservative” if we are honest in assessing it.”
State governors and legislators are engaged in growing conservative government, but myopic conservatives can only see Washington politics. Conservatives need to devote time and energy to local politics. All the tools are in the states to crush the criminal fascist syndicate occupying Washington. All conservatives need do is pick up those tools, learn how to use them and go to work.
For example, the state I’m currently working in has a unit that arrests Holder’s thugs. They are charged under the state’s anti-lynching law. About 15 are in jail now, facing up to 20 years in prison.
Gov. Walker in Wisconsin showed states how to take on union thugs and win.
There’s a constitutional sheriff who is holding public meetings in his county, urging citizens to buy weapons and learn how to use them.
Good article. They are all the same, bought and paid for.
“State governors and legislators are engaged in growing conservative government, but myopic conservatives can only see Washington politics. Conservatives need to devote time and energy to local politics.”
Bravo. You are exactly right. There is another reason why conservatives need to engage at the local and state level: The coming failure of the federal welfare hammock.
For the reasons stated previously - we cannot, at least at the national level, manage to elect leaders (of either party) that will take the steps necessary to rein in deficits, much less repay debt. Fact is, it probably won’t happen - at least to the degree necessary to prevent the failure of the welfare state.
So when the checks don’t show up, it is the state and local governments that are going to have to figure out how to take care of those that are truly needy. That’s going to be a tough job given how dependent we’ve become as a nation on socialist federal entitlements.
But to the subject of the thread - at the national level, the criticism of Romney Ryan is as correct as it is ridiculous in expectation of implementation of actual effective conservative policies at the federal level.
The good news, as you point out, is at the local and state level where the stupidity of overspending is less possible over the long term.
Your entire post is exactly right. But this is the overarching issue here, and in a way really is the subject of the thread. Ryann cannot introduce a plan that would immediately privatize Medicare.
Greater than 50% of our population has come to expect and rely upon govt entitlements. This includes GOP voters. And they all vote. Ryan may envision an incremental approach toward a mkt based system...that's only conjecture on my part. But do we have enough time? As of right now, unless something unforeseen economic upturn, it's dubious.
“But do we have enough time? As of right now, unless something unforeseen economic upturn, it’s dubious.”
“We won’t cut medicare or social security” is the universal lie of all parties and political races at the national level. It’s easy to say, it’s what people want to hear, and if somebody challenges it - you get to say “See, HE wants to push you off the cliff and cut your benefits”.
I have no idea whether there is a strategy that can be articulated to do it incrementally - and to your point, if you do it slowly enough so that it doesn’t impact people who want their stuff significantly, we may not have enough time to meaningfully evolve it to something even partially resembling a market-based system.
To me it’s a Gordian knot - only when the entire system breaks and folks are faced with a choice between dramatic cuts and nothing at all will the political system be able to cut through it rather than try to untangle the mess.
Of course, we may well have far worse problems at that point.
So everyone will lie and pretend that medicare/social security is fine.
Conservatives ought not delude ourselves that this makes us de facto supporters of the worst kind of socialism - but we’re already here, whether we admit it or not.
That’s why the criticism of Romney as liberal is comical. We’re ALL socialists, if we’re honest about where we are. We call ourselves conservatives and democrats - yet everyone wants the socialism to continue.
That is called a regulated market.
Almost all markets have some sort of regulation or limits. Ponzi and monopoly prohibitions, city health inspections for food service, banks and loan limits, water inspections for drinking water suppliers, licensing for physicians and veterinarians, etc. Regulations that prevent on industry from discarding its wastes to flow downstream. There are also sane regulations for insurers requiring certain amounts of capitalization and ability to pay claims.
There are extremely few totally free markets. The debate is always about the proper amount of regulation and, for me, how little regulation is possible.
However, this is not the debate in this election. The question here is do we move in the direction of free market for health insurance or do we continue the Obama move to a single provider, government.
That is what this election will decide.
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